1927年“电子阅读器”为快速阅读提供思路

新华网北京3月26日电 据美国科技博客Gizmodo报道，1927年通用电气公司的一项研究，或许对现在提出的“快速阅读”理念有所帮助。

“所有研究中最重要的内容是对精神的影响，”威利斯·惠特尼在1921年写道，“把光线投射到远方，以及提高用户的满意度。”

惠特尼是通用电气实验室的经理，他认为研究应除了发明实用的东西，还应该启发人们思考新的可能性。1927年，这些可能性包括一种新概念——我们现在称作“电子书”的东西。

1927年3月号的《科学与发明》杂志报道了通用电气实验室和惠特尼的团队。他们把使用的技术叫做“电子阅读器”。这是录制并回放语音书的方法。但背后的推动力并非名义上的懒惰，而是效率。

因为这个设备不但会播放某人朗读图书的声音，而且还可以用更快的速度来播放录制的内容。由于人们听觉理解的速度快于说话的速度，因此当时的“快速阅读”实际上是快速听读。

这个想法在1927年太前卫了，几十年之后通过密文唱片播放语音书的方式才在盲人中普及开。但至少，惠特尼的想法符合他关于建设未来的想法。

译者：林杉

百度新闻与新华网国际频道合作稿件，转载请注明出处。

This "Electric Book Reader" of 1927 Was The Future of Speed Reading

"The biggest thing of all in research is the mental effect," Willis Whitney wrote in 1921, "the projecting of a beam of light into the infinite and the growth of man's appreciation."

Whitney was a manager at the General Electric Research Lab and believed that tech research was as much about inspiring people to think about new possibilities as it was about practical applications. In 1927 those possibilities included a revolutionary new concept—a technology we now call the audiobook.

The March 1927 issue of Science and Invention magazine reported on research being conducted at the GE Research Lab by Dr. Willis Whitney and his team. They called the tech behind their latest work an "electric book reader." It was a way to record and play back audio from a recorded book. But the driving force behind the idea wasn't literary laziness, it was efficiency.

That's because the device didn't just play the sound of someone reading a book; it could play it back at a much faster rate than that at which it was recorded. Since humans can understand speech delivered much faster than the rate at which it's generally spoken, the original "speed reading" was really just speed listening.

This idea proved far too forward thinking for 1927, with audiobooks on long-playing records still decades away from becoming a mainstream success outside the blind community. But at the very least Whitney's research aligned with his idea for the role of research in helping to build the future.

(原标题：1927年“电子阅读器”为快速阅读提供思路)